Improvement seen in win by Bolts

Arizona Cardinals kicker Dan Carpenter (2) has his field goal blocked against the San Diego Chargers during the first half of a preseason NFL football game, Saturday, Aug. 24, 2013, in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Matt York)
— AP

Arizona Cardinals kicker Dan Carpenter (2) has his field goal blocked against the San Diego Chargers during the first half of a preseason NFL football game, Saturday, Aug. 24, 2013, in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Matt York)
/ AP

Alright. Truth is, tangibly speaking, the end result was nowhere near as important as the little things that occurred therein. Few reading this would be able to recall the score. If you did remain tuned in to watch the third- and fourth-teamers wind down the clock on the Chargers’ 24-7 triumph in Arizona on Saturday night, perhaps your remote was broken or maybe you have misplaced your life.

Had the scrubs lost the Chargers' 14-0 halftime lead , it really wouldn’t have changed how this was perceived from within. The first-team offense would have still twice trekked 13 plays to the end zone, the defense would have pitched a shutout while playing vanilla and without Eric Weddle (forced rest) and Corey Liuget (shoulder), and the special teams would have still blocked a punt and a field goal and covered kicks pretty darn well.

But the Chargers did win, and let the record show this was the most significant game the Chargers have won in almost a year.

Really.

We’re plenty used to regular season victories that left the team and the town feeling hollow, like doom had only been temporarily diverted. Hope has seemed perpetually on life support for some time. We’d all dutifully visit to see how things were going, but we knew the plug would be pulled sooner or later.

The most recent victory that provided any sort of feeling that it meant any sort of anything was last Sept. 29, when the Chargers left Kansas City with a 3-1 record.

They lost at New Orleans the next week, to Denver the week after that and would not win again until beating the Chiefs on the first day of November. Their next victory would come in the second week of December, and it was an impressive one but utterly meaningless in the big scheme of things. They won three times that month, in fact. What did those mean? What does the Chargers’ 10-5 December record over the past three seasons mean now?

In contrast, Saturday’s victory brings with it a hope that was unmistakable in a locker room filled with laughter.

The victory was also Mike McCoy’s first as a head coach. The team feted him afterward with a game ball, and he told them in response that while he was pleased with how they’d played overall, they all had a lot of work to do.

But the improvement in the special teams from the week before and what the offense showed it may be capable of, in particular, were no small things.

“We got better,” Eric Weddle said. “It was a point of emphasis.”

The way they played, too, indicated growth, which we needed to see. In what players said Monday was heard an acknowledgement that had been somewhat unsure the first two exhibitions.